Transparency News 1/29/20
Wednesday
January 29, 2020
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editorial
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BILL TRACKING CHART
On Wednesday, [this morning, after the full committee wraps up its work, you can watch the video feed on eyesonrichmond.org Stream 2 -- currently Stream 2 is playing a repeat of a Senate subcommittee hearing] voices across the country will speak up in support of Student Press Freedom Day. We’re with them. Student media is a critical training ground for future members of our profession, and a pillar of a free society. Yet, young adults covering news in high school or college face barriers to their First Amendment rights, and their ability to speak truth to power. Entering 2020, 14 states had responded by passing “New Voices” laws that seek to restore and protect student journalists’ rights. Dels. Chris Hurst, D-Montgomery and Danica Roem, D-Prince William, and Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, recently introduced bills that would add Virginia to the list. House Bill 36 is still in committee and Senate Bill 80 was tabled until 2021. But on Student Press Freedom Day, this is a necessary conversation to have. Whether aspiring media professionals, or young people seeking to learn through participation in their school’s media outlets, students’ right to press freedom is a fundamental component of our society’s information structure.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
stories of national interest
If you wander around the Washington state Capitol this year, you’ll see fresh messages posted outside many legislators’ offices. “No paper, please,” read some of the new flyers. “We are going paperless!” proclaim others. The key reason isn’t environmental (though some lawmakers say that’s a factor, too). Rather, the shift is mainly a result of a recent Washington Supreme Court ruling that state legislators must comply with the state’s Public Records Act. The Dec. 19 court decision confirmed that state lawmakers must follow the same government transparency rules as most other government officials.
Crosscut
A former assistant prison warden, at the center of an explosive 2012 government email in which a lobbyist alludes to a rape cover-up and illegal hiring, gave false information during an investigation four years earlier into whether he misplaced a bulky ring of keys at a state lockup, documents obtained by The Associated Press show. The Illinois Department of Corrections refused to say Monday whether Forrest Ashby, then paid $86,400 annually as the acting assistant warden for operations at Western Illinois Correctional Center, faced discipline for the infraction which could have resulted in his firing. The investigator said Ashby “impeded the investigation by giving inaccurate and false information” during the inquiry. According to the report obtained under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, Ashby told an internal investigator that his keys, which an employee found in the men's restroom, had been with him the entire day.
The New York Times
Local governments across the United States could perform a simple upgrade to strengthen voters' confidence that they are what they say they are: use websites that end in .gov. Federal officials control the keys to the ".gov" top-level domain, making it less likely that somebody could get one fraudulently and use it to fool people. Domains that end in .com or .org, meanwhile, could be set up by attackers to try to intercept users seeking information from real sources. But with an uneven appreciation across the country about the way a fake website could deceive users, and with little guidance from officialdom about what to do, many counties aren't taking that step, cyberspecialists say.
NPR
